Disks with a capacity of 240 TB are coming

Since SSDs are getting cheaper and cheaper, the appeal of classic magnetic hard drives is diminishing. However, they are still very useful in industrial environments. And it will be like this for some time, as we are once again in the trend of increasing prices for SSD disks. If you want the highest capacity, you must choose an HDD disk. That's why Seagate introduced a new hard disk technology, which should increase capacities up to 240 TB per disk in the next (about ten) years.

The latest heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) in state-of-the-art drives offers up to twice the data density compared to traditional rectangular magnetic recording (PMR) technology in hard drives. A research group from Seagate Technology, NIMS, and Tohoku University has now successfully demonstrated multi-level HAMR, enabling even higher data density.

The basic concept of multi-level magnetic recording is obviously not new. The only problem is finding suitable material. A team led by Seagate has now found it: two FePt-C nanogranular films separated by a Ru-C layer with a cubic crystal structure. 

By adjusting the laser power and magnetic fields during writing, the FePT layer can be treated independently, thus doubling the performance. If that's not impressive enough, the researchers believe that this approach can also be used for three- or even four-level recording.